Roambotics Unveils Jr., The First Home Patrolling Robot

Further developments from the eerie future we're inhabiting: Roambotics wants a wheeling robot to patrol your home. Their first concept robot "Jr." is the winner of the Proto Labs Cool Idea! Award, and is a pretty good-looking object. Designed as an autonomous, self-leveling, wheel-shaped robot with video and audio monitoring abilities, it will identify intruders or changes within the home. Data is wirelessly streamed to the cloud and the Roambotics network, and will update the homeowner via an app or email. The software uses machine learning to better understand the environment over time, and they hope to integrate 3D mapping of spaces. According to their description on Crunchbase, "Jr. features a base station with inductive charging, multi-surface slip and cliff detection, self-stabilization, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 A-N, and a NVIDIA tegra 4 microcontroller." That's right, we're one (wheeled) step closer to Robocop.

While I'm the type of paranoid luddite to categorically distrust streaming video of the inside of my home to the cloud, I do find the Roambotics Jr. interesting for its form and purpose. It's unclear how the wheel-based design is intended to maneuver through, say, multi level homes, or how it does on carpet. But the handle-like shape and what Proto Labs founder Larry Lukis called the "friendly, non-threatening unicycle form factor" are fun. It is designed to turn off in the prone position, and turn on when upright, leaving some questions about its ability to stay upright in a house full of obstacles or ornery pets. That said, the approachability of the design goes a long way towards making this robotic patroller embraceable. Just don't give Jr. a laser gun. I've seen that movie and it doesn't end well.

While it's still in development, this teaser from earlier in their process shows... well, not much besides an adorable dog.

But what better to keep your dog safe than a wheeled guard robot?

The latest design news, jobs & events. Straight to you every other week.

Join over 300,000 designers who stay up-to-date with the Core77 newsletter...

An artist's rendition of Hitchbot on the roadSeeing as self-driving cars won't be a reality any time soon, robots need to find an alternate means of travel for the time being. Case in point, the HitchBOT, a tiny, rainboot-wearing robot who is looking to travel across Canada by (you guessed...

Sure, smartphones allow us to communicate with anyone in the world at any time and provide access to a global network of knowledge and entertainment, but it's not like we can just pull the things out of our pockets and start using them. No. Instead we are forced to type...

Regardless of whether you're in the Invasion of Mypace camp, or the Well That's How Business Works camp, Facebook has been playing games with your heart. As we all now ought to know, Facebook has admitted to experimentally filtering feed results to test emotional response and behavior in users. While...

It should come as no surprise that the marriage of art and technology has had some difficulty finding a place in the institutional white cube exhibition spaces of most contemporary galleries and museums—after all, many practitioners reject the traditional art-object format on principle. Indeed, the incorporation of technology in...